Riding high off his gold medal win over teammate and Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte had the lead going into the last lap of the 400-meter freestyle relay before the French team pulled away with the gold medal.

It's true that Ryan Lochte, the 400 IM champion and would-be Olympic hero, blew a sizable lead in the United States' loss to France at the Aquatic Center in London. This came after leadoff man Nathan Adrian touched the wall first, Michael Phelps swam faster than any of the 32 men in the race, with the exception of the one who chased down Lochte, and Cullen Jones went faster in 2012 than he went during the American's epic victory in 2008. Thus, it's not entirely unfair to pin the loss on Lochte. He dove into the pool with a lead of 0.55 seconds and emerged from it having lost by the same exact margin.

It was a bad swim at a bad time against a man, Yannick Agnel, who was primed for a comeback. All of that is undeniable. Still, don't blame Lochte for blowing the race in the anchor leg. Save the derision for the man who put him there.

Team USA coach Gregg Troy knows Lochte isn't a sprint freestyler. He knows that of Lochte's many swimming gifts, closing speed isn't near the top. He knows Lochte has competed in four races totaling 1,200 meters already in London, including a 200-meter freestyle semifinal an hour before the relay final. He knows Lochte doesn't fit the mold of a sprint anchor. And still he put him in that role. It was a gamble, perhaps made the from the high of Lochte's dominant victory in the 400 IM and his too-quick coronation as the king of swimming. It didn't make sense when it was announced and it didn't make sense after.

Phelps,after looking washed up on Saturday, looked like a champion again on Sunday. And Lochte just reminded us of how good (and lucky!) Phelps was in 2008.

July 29, 2012

A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward. The paper is the first to use the updated siting system which addresses USHCN siting issues and data adjustments....

This will spark heated debate. The gist - the temperature time series data in the US tracks some combination of climate and urbanization:

The USHCN is one of the main metrics used to gauge the temperature changes in the United States. The first wide scale effort to address siting issues, Watts, (2009), a collated photographic survey, showed that approximately 90% of USHCN stations were compromised by encroachment of urbanity in the form of heat sinks and sources, such as concrete, asphalt, air conditioning system heat exchangers, roadways, airport tarmac, and other issues. This finding was backed up by an August 2011 U.S. General Accounting Office investigation and report titled: Climate Monitoring: NOAA Can Improve Management of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network.

The normally tough-minded Nate Silver succumbs to something or other (Summer heat? Editorial heat? and delivers a puffer on Olympic records. The best bit is Silver paraphrasing Gould (I guess a Dr. Bronze was not available). The laughable bit was this:

In another prestigious event, the women’s 100-meter dash, the world record of 10.49 seconds was set in 1988, at the Olympic trials in Indianapolis, by Florence Griffith-Joyner. She also set the Olympic record, 10.54 seconds, later that year in Seoul. No other woman has come within 0.2 of a second of her Olympic mark.

Those cases are not as exceptional as you might think. Only five track and field world records were broken at the Beijing games in 2008 out of 47 events. And it was actually a relatively productive Olympics by that standard: only seven world records had been established at the prior four games combined.

By contrast, 25 world records were set in the swimming competition in Beijing — out of just 34 events. The longest-standing world record in any swimming discipline is barely more than 10 years old. It was set by Grant Hackett in the 1,500-meter freestyle at the Australian Championships in 2001.

Unfortunately, one must mention steriods as a likely explanation. Women's track and field has a number of records that still stand from the 80's (100, 200, 400, 800, 100 hurdles, 4x100 relay, 4x400 relay, high jump, long jump, shot put, discus, heptathlon) and no one is at all mystified as to what was going on. In addition, the Chinese set track records in 1993 in the 1500, 3000 and 10,000 back when their doctors nearly took over women's swimming.

Which lets us segue to a possible defense of Mr. Silver's omission of any discussion of a steroid effect - maybe the impact was offsetting since both swimming and track were tainted. Well, maybe, or maybe not. From what I have read, swimming requires a lot more technique than running (although neither is neurosurgery). Or maybe the statistical method employed by Mr. Silver (who tracked trends, not records per se) glossed over the drug use in some fashion. Maybe! A few words about why the comparison of two sets of tainted results is meaningful would have been reassuring.

Let me go for the Gould here:

Another factor: an athlete with the perfect swimmer’s build and a world-class work ethic would still stand little chance of competing in this year’s games if he happened to be born in a poor nation like Cameroon or Panama — he might never have gotten into a pool, let alone an Olympic-size one. But running, especially over short distances, can be practiced virtually anywhere and anytime.

Which leads to this: As Stephen Jay Gould noted, the more open to competition a sport is, the harder it may be to break records or to post extraordinary statistics. The .400 hitter disappeared in baseball once the color barrier was broken, and black Americans and players from Latin America were allowed to compete in the major leagues. This raised the average level of performance — but also made it harder for any one athlete to stand out quite as much relative to his peers.

In the track and field events, it is more likely that an athlete has already come close to what Gould called the “right wall” of human performance, simply because the human being who possessed the ideal build and work ethic is more likely actually to have competed in the Olympic Games.

I would add that during a period of rising popularity, access to a sport will outstrip population growth. My unresearched impression is that plenty of Olympic swimmers from other nations are training at US colleges; my guess is that this is much more common today that forty years ago. It may well be that swimming has become a better ticket out of poverty than formerly, in a way that track has not.

And speaking of track, its popularity has plunged in the US, due in part to the doping and dubious records. If US athletic talent is being hoovered up by basketball and football (If? Imagine Russell Westbrook as a sprinter or MJ as a highjumper) more than it was forty years ago, then the pool of US track athletes won't be growing as quickly as the pool of swimmers. Globally, it may be that soccer and basketbal are collecting lots of potential track stars.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — In the Inland Empire, an economically depressed region in Southern California, President Obama’s health care law is expected to extend insurance coverage to more than 300,000 people by 2014. But coverage will not necessarily translate into care: Local health experts doubt there will be enough doctors to meet the area’s needs. There are not enough now.

Other places around the country, including the Mississippi Delta, Detroit and suburban Phoenix, face similar problems. The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that in 2015 the country will have 62,900 fewer doctors than needed. And that number will more than double by 2025, as the expansion of insurance coverage and the aging of baby boomers drive up demand for care. Even without the health care law, the shortfall of doctors in 2025 would still exceed 100,000.

CHICAGO — As President Obama pushes Mitt Romney to release more of his tax returns, a television commercial from his campaign bluntly says, “Makes you wonder if some years he’s paid any taxes at all.” In another spot, Mr. Obama’s campaign stops short of calling the Republican a tax cheat, but stirs suspicion by declaring, “Romney’s used every trick in the book.”

With 100 days remaining before Election Day, there is an air of apprehension around the Obama campaign headquarters here. Yet there are few regrets about the tone of the race, only a conviction that the circumstances — a frail economy, intense Republican opposition and a well-financed negative campaign from Mr. Romney and his allies — left Mr. Obama no option but to fight back even if it sullies his image as a candidate of hope and change.

Hope and Change has become "Do you hate Republicans as much as I do?" For a notable fraction of the voting public the answer is "Yes", but that fraction looks to be less than 50%.

July 28, 2012

The relationship between James and Krzyzewski took off in 2006. James took part in Team USA classes, which included chart study, informational videos and guest lectures. That camp, among the first signs of Team USA’s system overhaul, did not prevent a loss to Greece in the semifinals at the world championships that year. The men’s national team has not lost since.

In 2008, Krzyzewski flew to Akron, Ohio, James’s hometown, for a sit-down. He wanted to meet James’s inner circle, to see where he grew up, to understand what drove him.

One specific answer proved instructive. James told Krzyzewski he wanted to learn from his more experienced teammates, the usual collection of N.B.A. All-Stars. Krzyzewski pressed James for an example. James mentioned Jason Kidd, the veteran point guard whom James described as the best passer in the N.B.A.

As the team prepared for the Beijing Olympics that year, whenever Krzyzewski saw Kidd, he saw James close behind.

And on the defensive end:

Keith Dambrot, who coached James at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School, said Krzyzewski became the college coach James never had and always wanted. Dambrot said “people get a little bit scared” of James, “a little in awe of him.”

“They’ve had to get along with him in order to keep their jobs,” Dambrot added. “But he always wanted to be coached. He wants to be told the truth. That’s what really struck me between the last Olympics and now. Coach K took one of the greatest talents in the world, maybe ever, and he got him to play defense like a guy at Duke.”

In Beijing, Krzyzewski divided leadership roles. He put James, with his deep, booming voice, in charge of the defense. James shouted out pick-and-rolls, called switches and broke down film. He knew what sets each opposing team would run — knew all of them.

OK,we knew JAmes could playsome defense. When does Coach K work his magic on Carmelo Anthony?

Having peeked at the Olympic opening ceremonie in London, I will hazard that if the Brits last a thousand years men will still say, this was their weirdest hour:

The noisy, busy, witty, dizzying production somehow managed to feature a flock of sheep (plus a busy sheepdog), the Sex Pistols, Lord Voldemort, the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a suggestion that the Olympic rings were forged by British foundries during the Industrial Revolution, the seminal Partridge Family reference from “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” a group of people dressed like so many members of Sgt. Pepper’s band, some rustic hovels tended by rustic peasants, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and, in a paean to the National Health Service, a zany bunch of dancing nurses and bouncing sick children on huge hospital beds.

Any Olympic opening is a propaganda exercise, but Friday night’s blockbuster show demonstrated the broader public relations challenge facing the Communist Party as China becomes richer and more powerful. The party wants to inspire national pride within China, and bolster its own legitimacy in the process, even as leaders want to reassure the world that a rising China poses no danger.

That has not been an easy sales pitch during the tumultuous Olympics prelude, in which violent Tibetan protests and a devastating earthquake revealed the dark and light sides of Chinese nationalism.

But for one night, at least, the party succeeded wildly after a week dominated by news of polluted skies, sporadic protests and a sweeping security clampdown. Across Beijing, the public rejoiced. People painted red Chinese flags on their cheeks and shouted, “Go China!” long after the four-hour opening had concluded.

“For a lot of foreigners, the only image of China comes from old movies that make us look poor and pathetic,” said Ci Lei, 29, who watched the pageantry on a large-screen television at an upscale downtown bar. “Now look at us. We showed the world we can build new subways and beautiful modern buildings. The Olympics will redefine the way people see us.”

July 27, 2012

Having glanced through it, I would infer that an unspoken assumption of the Freeh report is that of course Joe Paterno knew what was happening in his football empire. Set against that, the 1998 abuse allegation seems to have been investigated and Sandusky exonerated. Here is Mr. Mirengoff quoting a contributor:

First, with respect to the 1998 incident, the Freeh Report says that several authorities promptly investigated and reviewed the matter, including the Department of Public Welfare, the University Police Department, the State College police, and the local district attorney’s office. Freeh Report at 42-47. A “counselor” named John Seasock issued a report that found “no indication of child abuse.” Freeh Report at 42-46. Mr. Seasock interviewed the alleged victim and determined that “there seems to be no incident which could be termed as sexual abuse, nor did there appear to be any sequential pattern of logic and behavior which is usually consistent with adults who have difficulty with sexual abuse of children.” Freeh Report at 44 (quoting Mr. Seasock’s 1998 evaluation of the alleged victim). The Freeh Report adds that Mr. Seasock “couldn’t find any indication of child abuse.” Freeh Report at 45.

Obviously, that exoneration does not look good in hindsight, but no evidence of a cover-up as of 1998 is presented. As to what Parterno knew and when he knew it:

The Report does not provide any evidence about what Joe Paterno knew about the 1998 allegations against Sandusky. The Report does not provide any evidence about what Mr. Paterno did or said, or what anyone said to Mr. Paterno. Indeed, the Freeh Report suggests that both law enforcement and the University police agreed that nothing improper happened and that the allegations lacked merit. Did anyone tell Joe Paterno about those findings?

Invoking the "Of course he knew" principle allows an easy answer to those questions, but one might have expected more in the way of documentation from the Freeh team.

As to the 2001 incident:

Furthermore, if Mr. Paterno had reported the McQueary information to me (were I, like Schultz, the official in charge of the University Police), I would have told him to keep his mouth shut going forward and let the authorities handle the matter. Otherwise, Mr. Paterno could have tainted the investigation. And, because he was a potential trial witness (to McQueary’s prior consistent statements, see Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(1)(B) and Pennsylvania Rule of Evidence613(c)), any further statements or action by Mr. Paterno could have become cross-examination fodder for the defense. Any further action by Mr.Paterno could only have damaged the integrity of the investigation and any prosecution against Sandusky.

Indeed, Mr. Paterno explained his actions before died by saying that “I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the University procedure was. So I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did.” Freeh Report at 77-78. This statement makes perfect sense, and the notion of a football coach supervising a criminal investigation is ridiculous. It is very possible that Curley or Schultz or both told Mr. Paterno to stay out of the matter; in fact, Schultz should have told him as much. But we don’t know because Schultz and Curley are under indictment and not talking, Paterno is dead, and the Freeh Report did not find any information about this issue.

This is a pretty legalistic case. A Joe Paterno with a more assertive attitude and a greater interest in the well-being of the children involved - i.e., the Joe Paterno we thought we knew - would not have let a mere University President tell him to back off and pipe down. The Joe Paterno we thought we knew would have made sure butts were kicked and names were taken, lawyers be damned.

July 26, 2012

CBS News leads the Dash to Dumb in their coverage of the Aurora shooting:

(CBS News) The well-armed shooter in the Aurora movie theater massacre had a hit ratio twice what a police officer might achieve engaging with armed assailants in a street setting.

That suggests, says CBS News senior correspondent John Miller, that the suspect - who is believed to have planned his assault with precision - practiced shooting prior to the attack on the theater audience last Friday.

First, it would hardly be surprising if we eventually learn the shooter practiced somewhere. However, the statistical foundation presented here is a bit sandy:

"Here's an individual who we see kind of lolling in court but who went into that theater, actually shooting and hitting with bullets more than 52 people of the 70 injured," said Miller on "CBS This Morning." "Here's a guy who went in with what we think was about 100 rounds; that gives him a 50 percent hit ratio.

"From law enforcement, when you go on the range and you're shooting at a paper target - it is standing still and waits for you - that's a 90 to 94 percent hit ratio in a lot of places. In combat shooting in the street, police officers often hit in ranges of 21 to 25 percent of their targets."

Let's accept that street fighting figure for the moment (the NY Times compares the LAPD and the NYPD and is closer to the low 30s, but whatever.)

First, the police officers in street incidents were firing at a small number of humans (presumably, "one" was the most common number of targets); the Aurora shooter was firing into a large crowd. Even without training, I bet I could hit the broad side of a barn at ten paces. Similarly, I imagine that the Auurora shooter had plenty of "hits" where he missed his aim point but hit a different person downrange. If I recall correctly, people in adjoining theatres were hit by bullets passing through the wall - were these really well-aimed shots that boosted his hit rate?

Secondly, the shooter used a shotgun and a rifle. Surely one shotgun blast or one rifle round into a crowd could hit multiple targets. Would a bullet that wounded three people give the shooter a hit rate (on that shot) of 300%? Do police officers often (or ever?) fire in situations where a hit rate of 200% or 300% is possible?

Did the shooter practice? Quite likely. Do these stats demonstrate that? No.

Following the Aurora shooting we get the inevitable silliness from a feminist troubled by the disproportion between men shielding their girlfriends from bullets and women shielding their boyfriends from bullets.

I admire the self-refuting nature of her presentation. She advances both of these propositions:

(1) Heroism has never had a gender: just tell that to Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, or any of the female soldiers who risk their lives daily in our military;

and, following a mention of the United 93 action on 9/11,

(2) We just know it feels good to have heroes and it feels good to sit down on an airplane and think, “Maybe there is someone like Todd Beamer on this flight.”

Do men really sit and hope that someone else will be Todd Beamer? My impression is that we aspire to be Todd Beamer, if situationally appropriate. As to women's aspirations, well, the author just described hers. Which is fine - if she is 120 pounds of coiled literary angst, she may not be the best choice to grapple with a trained terrorist anyway.

As to her point - if "heroism" includes moral courage, as it should, then women are well represented by examples from history. If heroism is limited to brief displays of physical courage, there are surely many more examples involving men. That seems to follow from both cultural norms and basic biology, since the average guy is bigger and stronger than the average women.

That said, absolutely no one is surprised when a mother is physically fierce in protecting her children, as exemplified by Patricia Legarreta, who rallied her two young ones out of the Aurora theater (with help from a young man!) after her boyfriend cut and ran.

And Todd Beamer had help from the stewardesses on United 93. But let's read about some of the guys who took the lead in the scuffling:

This much we know, they were big guys: Bingham was a 6-foot-4 rugby player; Glick, also a rugby player and judo champion; Beamer was 6 foot 1 and 200 pounds, and Nacke was a 5-foot-9, 200-pound weightlifter with a "Superman" tattoo on his shoulder.

Logic, biology and cultural norms all pointed to letting the men lead the way on United 93, and in many other moments of sudden physical peril.

July 25, 2012

Who are you going to believe, Obama or your lying ears? Obama has a new ad out "explaining" his infamous "You didn't build that" Kinsley gaffe:

"Those ads taking my words about small business out of context - they're flat out wrong," the president says in the 31-second pitch. "Of course Americans build their own businesses. Every day, hard-working people sacrifice to meet a payroll, create jobs and make our economy run."

"And what I said was that we need to stand behind them, as America always has, by investing in education and training, roads and bridges research and technology," he says. "I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message because I believe we're all in this together."

Stand behind small business? I think Obama means, kneel behind small business and wait for someone to deliver a push, so that money falls out of their pockets on the way down.

But you know what, I’m not going to see us gut the investments that grow our economy to give tax breaks to me or Mr. Romney or folks who don’t need them. So I’m going to reduce the deficit in a balanced way. We’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts. We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more. (Applause.) And, by the way, we’ve tried that before -- a guy named Bill Clinton did it. We created 23 million new jobs, turned a deficit into a surplus, and rich people did just fine. We created a lot of millionaires.

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

So Obama is going to "stand behind" these small businesses while waiting for them to "give something back", as if they are not already paying taxes? Sounds like he intends to pick their pockets.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT THE NEWS OUTLET FORMERLY KNOWN AS MSNBC:

I thought he meant standing behind the small business owner and telling him to . . . lean forward.

July 24, 2012

A Chinese oil giant is bidding for a Canadian energy producer for all the obvious reasons - to secure non-Mid East energy for China and to get a window on advanced Western extraction technology, includig fracking and deepwater drilling.

But we can count on the Canadians to do the right thing, right? Uh huh - just as they can count on us:

The government of [Conservative] Stephen Harper, Canada’s prime minister, has softened its earlier opposition to Chinese investments in the country. During his early days in office, Mr. Harper repeatedly challenged China’s human rights record and occasionally snubbed its officials, to the dismay of many in corporate Canada.

More recently, however, Mr. Harper has dropped that rhetoric and hailed China as a new market for Canadian energy, particularly oil from the oil sands of Alberta. Nearly all of Canada’s oil exports now go to the United States.

Opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, which would take oil sands production to the American Gulf Coast, appears to be a factor in Mr. Harper’s recent attempts to solicit China as both a customer of and investor in Canada’s energy sector.

The idea that Obama needs to wait until December to approve Keystone because he doesn't want to antagonize the enviros in his base is all very understandable in All About Obamaworld, but the real world is continuing to turn with or withut him. We need to get past this November election so Obama can either resume playing at President or pass the baton to Romney.

July 23, 2012

WASHINGTON – Despite concerted Democratic attacks on his business record, Republican challenger Mitt Romney scores a significant advantage over President Obama when it comes to managing the economy, reducing the federal budget deficit and creating jobs, a national USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds.

By more than 2-1, 63%-29%, those surveyed say Romney's background in business, including his tenure at the private equity firm Bain Capital, would cause him to make good decisions, not bad ones, in dealing with the nation's economic problems over the next four years.

It's not all grim for the Hopers and Changers:

To be sure, Obama retains significant advantages of his own. By 2-1, he's rated as more likable than Romney.

And that would be even more important if Obama were running for Jay Leno's job.

NBC News nails down the False Equivalence of the day award with this "gotcha" moment from 2002 in which Mitt Rommey encourages Olympic athletes and observers to thank the parents, coaches and supporters of the athletes. I am just going to restore Romney's comments to their original sequence to more fully emphasize the length of this NBC stretch:

In full context, Romney, of course, also praised the Olympians’ efforts – right before he made his “you didn’t get here solely on your own” remark:

“Tonight we cheer the Olympians, who only yesterday were children themselves,” Romney said. “As we watch them over the next 16 days, we affirm that our aspirations, and those of our children and grandchildren, can become reality. We salute you Olympians – both because you dreamed and because you paid the price to make your dreams real. You guys pushed yourself, drove yourself, sacrificed, trained and competed time and again at winning and losing.”

"You Olympians, however, know you didn't get here solely on your own power,” said Romney, who on Friday will attend the Opening Ceremonies of this year’s Summer Olympics. “For most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers, encouraged your hopes, coaches guided, communities built venues in order to organize competitions. All Olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted them. We’ve already cheered the Olympians, let’s also cheer the parents, coaches, and communities. All right! [pumps fist].”

That can't be controversial. By way of contrast, Obama was explaining that business leaders didn't build "that" (either their business or the infrastructure that supports it) as a justification for even-higher taxes:

But you know what, I’m not going to see us gut the investments that grow our economy to give tax breaks to me or Mr. Romney or folks who don’t need them. So I’m going to reduce the deficit in a balanced way. We’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts. We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more. (Applause.) And, by the way, we’ve tried that before -- a guy named Bill Clinton did it. We created 23 million new jobs, turned a deficit into a surplus, and rich people did just fine. We created a lot of millionaires.

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

Not much of an analogy to Olympic athletes. Now, if instead of taxes Obama had been calling on internet millionaires and Wall Street's hedge fund heroes to give up a round of applause to their moms and dads and these titans were churlishly refusing, well, we would have something to argue about.

It is not quite the 'death sentence' for Penn State football, but they will be among the walking dead for quite a few years.

And PSU will vacate its victories from 1998 to 2011. So the NCAA is rewriting the past? One might think that the moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on. But an immediate consequence of this vacation will be that Joe Paterno is dropped from the record books as the winningest Division 1 college football coach ever.

My hope was that the NCAA would punish the Penn State Administration but not the current roster of players; the penalties announced seem to be oriented that way.

FWIW: I remember irritiating someone back in 1986 with my bold pronouncement that the NCAA, Fidel Castro, and the North Koreans were the three great unreformed dictatorships of our era, and that the NCAA was lijkely to outlast the other two. I'm still waiting! And still betting on the NCAA.

July 21, 2012

Good Lord, Jim; or, Drop The Baby and Run: a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, which apparently is drop the six month old and high-tail it out of the theatre where bullets are flying, abandoning the wounded girlfriend, the baby, and the four-year old.

Rohrs said he lost his 4-month-old son, Ethan, in the darkness and chaos of the theater, but got out himself. Then, once outside, he could not initially find Legarreta.

"I got to my truck and I drove across the mall," Rohrs added. "I'm going to call 911 and trying to call Patricia and it's just ringing, and every time it rings I'm like they're dead, they're dead, your whole family is dead."

They called him before he made it across the county line, or who knows where he would have come to rest.

Well, it is easy to sit here and mock the young fool. I have never been in a chaotic situation under live fire, so I am only hoping that I would react more appropriately.

July 20, 2012

A lone gunman dressed in riot gear burst into a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., at a midnight showing of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises" and methodically began shooting patrons, killing at least 12 people and injuring at least 50.

The suspect, James Holmes, 24, of Aurora, was caught by police in the parking lot of the Century 16 Movie Theaters, nine miles outside Denver, after police began receiving dozens of 911 calls at 12:39 a.m. MT. Police said the man appeared to have acted alone.

James Wilburn was sitting in the second row of theater 9 after midnight when an emergency door opened and a man entered, the Denver Post reports.

"He was dressed in black," Wilburn told the newspaper. "Wearing a flack jacket and a gas mask."

The man was carrying a shotgun and had a rifle strapped to his back, Wilburn said. The gunman then dropped a canister, causing a noxious gas to spew out. He raised the shotgun and repeatedly fired toward the back of the theater.

Wilburn and three friends dove to the floor, hiding behind seats in front of them. The gunman was only five or six feet away, he said.

Once the shotgun was empty, the gunman calmly dropped it to the floor, took the rifle and went on firing. Wilburn heard roughly 30 shots, the Denver Post reports.

I assume that even the most ardent advocates of concealed carry don't claim that the concealed carry community can stop all crime. That said, Colorado is a concealed carry state. Is it fair to assume that given the noise, confusion, tear gas and level of preparation of this shooter that a concealed carrier would have had to perform a miracle to avert or mitigate this?

July 18, 2012

The NY Times delivers a smile when they seek expert commentary on Obama's proposed welfare reform giving states more flexibility in setting work requirements. This appears at the end of the report:

Peter B. Edelman, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy, called Republican opposition to the waivers “totally ridiculous.”

“This is an advisory that is all about making it easier to get a job, which I thought is what the Republicans wanted,” Mr. Edelman said. “To say that this is somehow against the concept of TANF is bizarre, because what we have here are restrictions that Congress enacted that, on the ground, make it harder to get from here to there.”

In addition to his role at Georgetown, Mr. Edelman was one of the Clinton Administration officials who famously resigned in 1998 to protest Clinton's signing of the 1996 welfare reform. One of his many grievances was the work requirement.

Dylan Matthews of the WaPo, writing at Ezra Klein's blog, demonstrates an alternative way to introduce Mr. Edelman:

Peter Edelman, who served as assistant secretary of HHS under Clinton until he resigned in protest over the signing of welfare reform, tells me...

The NY Times tells us more than we ever hoped to know about guar, an odd bean grown in India that has become central to the world's energy boom. They also deliver an unwitting tribute to the famous Invisible Hand of the marketplace:

LORDI, India — Sohan Singh’s shoeless children have spent most of their lives hungry, dirty and hot. A farmer in a desert land, Mr. Singh could not afford anything better than a mud hut and a barely adequate diet for his family.

But it just so happens that when the hard little bean that Mr. Singh grows is ground up, it becomes an essential ingredient for mining oil and natural gas in a process called hydraulic fracturing.

Halfway around the world, earnings are down for an oil services giant, Halliburton, because prices have risen for guar, the bean that Mr. Singh and his fellow farmers raise.

Halliburton’s loss was, in a rather significant way, Mr. Singh’s gain — a rare victory for the littlest of the little guys in global trade. The increase in guar prices is helping to transform this part of the state of Rajasthan in northwestern India, one of the world’s poorest places. Tractor sales are soaring, land prices are increasing and weddings have grown even more colorful.

“Now we have enough food, and we have a house made of stone,” Mr. Singh said proudly while his rail-thin children stared in awe.

Might this foretell global shortages of guar? Unlikely, since this seems to be a desperate, grow-anywhere bean and the locals are pushing hard to expand and stablize production:

For centuries, farmers here used guar to feed their families and their cattle. There are better sources of nutrition, but few that grow in the Rajasthani desert, a land rich in culture but poor in rain. Broader commercial interest in guar first developed when food companies found that it absorbs water like a souped-up cornstarch, and a powdered form of the bean is now widely used to thicken ice cream and keep pastries crisp.

But much more important to farmers here was the recent discovery that guar could stiffen water so much that a mixture is able to carry sand sideways into wells drilled by horizontal fracturing, also known as fracking.

The fracking boom in the United States has led to a surge in natural gas production, a decline in oil imports and a gradual transition away from coal-fired power plants. Fracking may also have spoiled some rural water supplies and caused environmental damage in parts of the United States, but it is hard to find anyone in Rajasthan who sees fracking as anything but a blessing.

“Without guar, you cannot have fracturing fluids,” said Michael J. Economides, a professor of engineering at the University of Houston who is a fracking expert. “And what everybody is worried about is that there is virtually no guar out there now.”

...

Now, an international effort is under way to ensure that guar supplies come closer to meeting the soaring demand, and hundreds of thousands of small farmers here have been recruited in the effort. Leading the way is Vikas WSP, an Indian company that specializes in the production of guar powders.

Many farmers sold their seed stock last year when prices shot up, so Vikas has held rallies in small towns to pass out free seeds, including new high-production hybrids. The company persuaded farmers with irrigated land in the state of Punjab, north of Rajasthan, to plant guar in the spring instead of cotton. That crop is now coming to market.

And Vikas signed contracts with farmers guaranteeing a return of nearly $800 per acre if they planted guar, no matter what this year’s monsoon brought.

“Whatever they produce, we will buy,” said Sanjay Pareek, a Vikas vice president.

Anticipating a heavy crop, Vikas is more than doubling its processing capacity by building two new plants in Jodhpur, the second-largest city in Rajasthan. By next year, the company will be able to produce 86,400 tons of guar powder each day, it said. Smaller producers are taking similar steps.

“Last year was an extraordinary year,” said S. K. Sharma, managing director of Lotus Gums and Chemicals in Jodhpur. “In 35 years in this business, I’ve never seen that.”

Mr. Sharma said his company would soon open a second plant dedicated entirely to serving gas companies, adding that he was cautiously optimistic that guar prices would remain robust. “But we know there are efforts to grow guar in China, Australia, California and elsewhere, and it has us worried,” he said.

The guar will get through, so frackers and ice cream eaters can resume not worrying about it.

And missing from this story, at least for now - any mention of Obama's bold international effort to stabilize guar production. The Times almost makes it seem that rising prices signaled the market to increase production, despite no prodding from Team Obama. Nahhh, they didn't grow those beans...

July 16, 2012

Obama recently explained that his biggest failing was his innate modesty and quiet demeanor, or something:

CBS News) President Obama's biggest mistake during his first term, he told CBS News in an exclusive interview, has been putting policy over storytelling.

..."When I think about what we've done well and what we haven't done well," the president said, "the mistake of my first term - couple of years - was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right. And that's important. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times."

More speeches! That's the ticket!

If that self-analysis triggers a bit of a flashback, well, here is Bill Clinton, from the summer and fall of 2011:

Last summer, as Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton celebrated the former president’s 65th birthday with a party at their rented Hamptons home, talk among their guests turned to President Obama’s travails over the debt crisis and doubts about his re-election. “I’m really trying to help him,” the white-haired former president said, shaking his head, “but he seems to have lost his narrative.”

What has given the U.S. its edge is that the early development risks were largely borne by small-time entrepreneurs, drilling a lot of dry holes on private land. These "wildcat" developers were gradually able to buy up oil, gas and mineral leases from private owners while gathering enough geological data to bring in commercial producers.

Take Texas's Barnett Shale, a particularly tight rock formation that had been eluding speculators for years. Houston-based Mitchell Energy & Development Corp. spent the 1980s refining horizontal drilling techniques, and by 1996 it was producing Barnett shale gas.

Jason Dvorin, a partner in the Dallas-based oil and gas leasing and exploration firm Dvorin LLC, recounts that when his father Sanford heard of Mitchell's success, he decided to go all-in, having also spent years chasing Barnett shale. In 1997, father and son began buying individual leaseholds for mineral, oil and gas rights at $25-$50 an acre. By the time they sold their productive leases at the end of 2007, Mr. Dvorin recalls, they were going for as much as $30,000 per acre. "Even today, in a depressed market, operators are still paying $1,500 an acre."

Now in ObamaWorld, these guys didn't invent oil, or cars, or the modern economy that uses oil in so many ways, so their tiny, tiny contribution to the general welfare should be ignored.

And the Times had an interesting piece on Penny Pritzker and the perils of being rich and an Obama backer:

Ms. Pritzker’s commitment [to Obama 2012] has become a matter of mystery and consternation among some Obama supporters struggling to recreate the success of the 2008 finance team that she led as chairwoman. Though she is assisting with the re-election campaign in a number of ways, Ms. Pritzker — whose family owns the Hyatt hotel chain and is active in charitable and Jewish causes — is less visible, has cut back on fund-raising and has told friends that she is intentionally doing less.

Why?

For Ms. Pritzker, her high-profile backing of Mr. Obama came at an unexpectedly bitter cost. Their relationship made her a punching bag for the labor movement, which targeted her for what union officials call exploitative practices toward housekeepers by the Hyatt hotels.

She had drawn business and Jewish leaders to support Mr. Obama, but when many of them turned hostile toward the president because of his policies, some directed their ire toward her, even though she had her own criticisms, too.

The anger amounted to a “triple assault” on Ms. Pritzker, said William M. Daley, who succeeded Mr. Emanuel as chief of staff. “She’s borne the brunt of a lot of the attacks,” he said.

“Often the big picture is not understood on where the president wants to go,” Ms. Pritzker said in a telephone interview. “That’s frustrating.”

For Mr. Obama, Ms. Pritzker’s wealth and business experience are huge assets but also potential liabilities. He considered nominating her for commerce secretary but did not, because her fortune risked making her radioactive. She does plan to join him on the campaign trail this month, but that could prove awkward, given that the president is pounding Mr. Romney for some of the same practices of which Ms. Pritzker or her family business is accused — housing significant wealth in offshore trusts and treating workers poorly.

Basically, Team Obama values her money but not her presence, since bashing the rich is the only message thay have left. Ooops.

Let me dive into the comments and channel my inner James D in response:

Romney - or his surrogates - need to counter garbage like Zero's speech yesterday with something like "successful business are successful because they DO give back. They give back by producing things that people want and need and that make their lives better. They give back by employing workers who can then support their own families and their communities. And they give back by already paying hundreds upon hundreds of taxes and fees and registrations. The businesses pay corporate taxes. Their owners and their employees pay income taxes. The owners and the employees pay social security taxes and medicare taxes. They pay state income taxes. They pay fuel taxes when their trucks deliver products out into the world. They pay sales taxes when they buy the materials to produce their products, and customers pay sales taxes when they buy those products. All these successful people are already giving back in ways that the President, who's never worked for a business, or directly employed anyone, or produced anything that any consumer could concievably want, never has and never will."

July 14, 2012

George Zimmerman no longer thinks he can get a fair trial from Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. and wants him to step aside, according to a motion filed on Friday.

The request comes one week after Lester raised Zimmerman's bail to $1 million and wrote a scathing order, describing the Neighborhood Watch volunteer as a manipulator who knew the ins and outs of the criminal justice system and appeared to be preparing to flee the country with $130,000 in hidden money.

Nice to see the defense playing a bit of hardball. And given the politically charged nature of this prosecution, Judge Lester may be delighted to end his moment in the spotlight.

July 13, 2012

I think putting Hillary on the ticket makes Obama look desperate and weak. But he is! I can't imagine how they solve the Wild Bill Problem but if physicists can find the Boson-Higgs particle they ought to be able to fit Obama's and Bill's ego in the same universe.

As to Rice, uhh, wouldn't that just energize all those Dems who have not been united behind much of anything since the Iraq war wound down? Do we really want to re-fight the Summer of 2001 and Ms. Rice's non-response to the blinking radar screens? Do we want to re-fight the Summer of 2003 and puzzle over Saddam's WMDs?

It may be water under the bridge now, but Team Obama will rather talk about the run-up to Iraq than the current economy. Remember, we are talking about a guy whose big selling point in 2008 was his firm commitment not to invade Iraq in 2002. Geez, in 2012 with Rice on the ticket all we will her about is how Obama won't be fooled by Saddam and his non-existent WMDs. Sure, Saddam is dead and we ought to be taking about Iran, but the past lives forever in Obama's rhetoric.

Mr. Geithner, who is now the United States Treasury secretary, questioned the integrity of the benchmark as reports surfaced that Barclays and other big banks were misrepresenting the rates. In 2008, Barclays had several conversations with New York Fed officials about the matter.

Mr. Geithner then reached out to top British authorities to discuss issues with the interest rate, which is set in London. In an e-mail to his counterparts, he outlined reforms to the system, suggesting that British authorities “strengthen governance and establish a credible reporting procedure” and “eliminate incentive to misreport,” according to the documents.

But the warnings came too late, and Barclays continued the illegal activity.

It was too late!?! How could it be "too late" for such timeless advice as “eliminate incentive to misreport"?

LIBOR is set every business day; since Barclays had manipulated it in the past and the past cannot be undone, they were obliged to manipulate it forever? Really?

Come on - Geithner fired off a CYA memo, nothing happened, nobody followed up, and nobody cared. Until much later, when it was too late.

July 12, 2012

The standard Democratic Party solution to any problem Barack Obama or Elizabeth Warren can identify is to hire the smart regulators and put them in charge of fixing it. And by the way, the smart ones will also be honest and incorruptible, immune to any temptations such as, hmm, claiming to be a minority.

One might wonder whether these paragons can reliably be hired en masse at government pay scales. Actually, one might not wonder - they can't be.

Two different stories illustrate the conundrum. First, the Times reports on the problems with overseeing JP Morgan Chase:

After the financial crisis, regulators vowed to overhaul supervision of the nation’s largest banks.

As part of that effort, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in mid-2011 replaced virtually all of its roughly 40 examiners at JPMorgan Chase to bolster the team’s expertise and prevent regulators from forming cozy ties with executives, according to several current and former government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

When a regulator can quadruple his compensation by switching sides and joining the regulatee, "cozy relationships" are an ongoing problem. And one might worry that the regulatory team that watched the big banks go over the cliff in 2008 (although less so with JPM) might not have possessed the sharpest knives in the drawer.

However!

But those changes left the New York Fed’s front-line examiners without deep knowledge of JPMorgan’s operations for a brief yet critical time, said those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because there is a federal investigation of the bank.

Forced to play catch-up, the examiners struggled to understand the inner workings of a powerful investment unit, those officials said. At first, the examiners sought basic information about the group, including the name of the unit’s core trading portfolio.

By the time they got up to speed, it was too late. In May, JPMorgan disclosed a multibillion-dollar trading loss in the investment unit.

They “couldn’t ask tough questions,” said a former official who was based at JPMorgan.

Ooops!

Of course, the premise is that the smart, experienced traders and risk managers at JP Morgan Chase were too stupid to see that their slick "hedge"/trade was going to cost them $5 billion, but all could have been averted if some twenty-five year old who couldn't score a job at an investment bank out of school asked a few probing questions. Uh huh.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said Tuesday it had received word as early as 2007 from the British bank Barclays about problems with the benchmark interest rate that underpins much of global lending.

Barclays has admitted to rigging Libor, an interest rate that sets the standard for lending in a wide variety of markets — from corporate bonds to credit cards and some mortgages.

On Tuesday, the New York Fed said that it had received “occasional anecdotal reports from Barclays of problems with Libor” in late 2007, as the financial crisis was starting.

...

In testimony last week before the British Parliament, former Barclays chief executive Robert E. Diamond said the bank had repeatedly brought to the attention of U.S. regulators — as well as U.K. regulators — the problems that the bank was experiencing in the Libor market.

He said the bank’s warnings to regulators that Libor was artificially low did not lead to action.

Barclays’ regulator in the United States is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which was run at the time by current Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.

Diamond said that his bank had alerted the New York Fed to issues with Libor at least 12 times.

After receiving initial reports in 2007, the New York Fed said, it made additional inquiries of Barclays about its Libor operations, and subsequently made suggestions for changes to British authorities.

Geithner personally participated in several conversations with Barclays executives, according to his New York Fed calendar, later posted on the Web site of the New York Times. It wasn’t clear if these meetings focused on the Libor issues now coming to light.

Geithner has sailed on to Treasury Secretary, where he continues to oversee smart regulators asking the tough questions.

The surprise is that this sort of outcome is inevitable, yet it is a constant source of surprise to the statist Dems.

One last bit to conclude this tirade - in 1999 Team Clinton had Bob Rubin and Larry Summers who, along with Alan Greenspan were viewed as the greatest economic stewards in the history of economic stewardship. Surely these were the smart guys to whom we should defer, yes?

Uh, no, and stop calling me 'Shirley'. With a few short, ghastly years the mainstream progressive position (subject to pushback) was that Summers and Rubin had been wrong about Glass Steagall and very wrong about light regulation of derivatives.

Yet Summers and Rubin were the reigning geniuses, having been around for budget surpluses, rising incomes, miraculous employment, and heroic rescues of Mexico, Russia and LTCM (oops...).

I guess the real Dem strategy is to hire the next generation of geniuses. Good luck with that.

Prosecutors are releasing more documents in the case of a man charged with fatally shooting 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

The documents being released Thursday include reports from the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

The FBI is conducting a probe into whether there were civil rights violations in the handling of Martin's death investigation, and the FDLE assisted the criminal investigation.

DUMP: The new file is 284 pages. At a glance, I would say the Federal hate crimes investigation is stalling out - all sorts of people, including the ex-fiancee, say George Zimmerman never seemed to have a problem with race. Against that, there is Zimmerman's MySpace page from 2005 where he complains about Mexican thugs (p.224).

We learn a bit about the Gangs of Sanford (p. 116). Three gangs call themselves some variant of "Goons"; they are all black except for one token whte. A fourth gang is Hispanic. And believe it or not, in colder weather these gangstas favor hoodies.

A HEADSCRATCHER FOR THE DEFENSE: The FBI interviewed lead investigator Chris Serino of the Sanford PD. However, their conclusion is overlaid by the timestamp at the bottom of the document, so we end with this (p. 123):

Serino believed that Zimmerman's story...

What?!? Was a crock? Was convincing? Showed no evidence of racial animus? More discovery soonest! [I think we know! Serino believed Zimmerman's story was "scripted", a word two news outlets use in quotes; see below].

THE ORLANDO SENTINEL: The OS reporting is picked up by the Chicago Tribune:

Federal civil-rights investigators interviewed dozens of George Zimmerman's friends, neighbors and co-workers, and no one said he was a racist, records released Thursday show.

FBI agents spread out across the state, talking to three dozen people, including gun-shop employees, Zimmerman's ex-fiancée and the Sanford police detective who led the investigation into the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old.

None said he or she had ever known him to show racial bias. A co-workerwho saw him the day after the shooting said Zimmerman was "beat up physically and emotionally."

Chris Serino, the police detective who interviewed Zimmerman the night of the shooting, told agents he thought Zimmerman had pursued Trayvon "based on his attire" and not "skin color." Zimmerman, he said, has a "little hero complex" but is not a racist.

Zimmerman's account sounded "scripted" to him, Serino said. Even so, he did not have enough evidence to justify an arrest, he told an FBI agent, even though he was getting pressure from a small number of officers within the department to file charges.

Well, they need to bring their readers along slowly. Here we go from the lead by Lizette Alvarez:

MIAMI — A wide-ranging investigation of George Zimmerman, who is charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Trayvon Martin, found a man not prone to violence or prejudice and who moved easily between racial and ethnic groups — a “decent guy,” “a good human being.” The assessments, made public on Thursday, came from interviews with friends, co-workers and neighbors who were interviewed by the F.B.I. and state and local law-enforcement authorities. They are part of a pretrial cache of documents in the case that have been released periodically by Angela B. Corey, the special prosecutor. The F.B.I. was brought in to conduct a federal civil rights investigation, which is focused on whether there was racial bias involved in the shooting and in the handling of the case.

SCRIPTED: Both the OS and the Times include the word "scripted" in quotes in describing Serino's reaction to Zimmerman's story. That phrase would fit beautifully in the last visible sentence on the .pdf document (p. 123) and does not appear (to these tired eyes) elsewhere in the FBI account of their Serino interview.

DNA recovered from a chain at the site of an Occupy Wall Street protest in March has been matched with DNA linked to the unsolved killing of a Juilliard student in 2004, law enforcement officials familiar with the case said on Tuesday.

The student, Sarah Fox, 21, disappeared while on a jog in Inwood Hill Park in May 2004, and her naked body was found in the park almost a week later surrounded by yellow tulip petals. The DNA on the chain from the New York protest, the officials said, was matched with DNA found on her portable compact disc player, which was found in the park several days after her body was discovered.

Investigators were seeking to determine the significance of the DNA match. One law enforcement official said it was unclear who might have touched both the CD player and the chain and why, noting that it was possible that the person who did so might not have been the killer.

“Whether it’s a friend or the bad guy, we have to find out,” the official said.

The chain was used in March to prop open an emergency exit door at a subway station as part of an Occupy Wall Street action to allow passengers to ride free.

The police later released surveillance video of people in dark hoods and masks wrapping a long silver chain around the emergency exit door.

July 10, 2012

Even the Obama apologists at the AP are straining to keep Hope and Change alive:

AdWatch: Ad Says Obama Makes Excuses on Economy

...

KEY IMAGES: A female narrator says, "America's jobless rate is still too high" as the screen shows a long line of workers, presumably unemployed and applying for jobs.

"Barack Obama's got lots of excuses for the bad economy," the narrator says as a photo shows Obama pointing a finger. A string of brief Obama sound bites follows, including "Headwinds coming from Europe", "We've had a string of bad luck", "An earthquake in Japan", "An Arab spring", "Some things that we could not control" and "We've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades." Large text of Obama's words amplify the message.

So, is Obama full of excuses or is he a Man With Plan? It's complicated!

Because the ad relies on a jumble of sound bites strung together, there's scant context for what Obama was trying to say in each case. Europe's economic struggles and upheaval in the Middle East, for example, do at times impact the U.S. economy.

The ad also oversimplifies the role of federal debt in the broader economy. And it doesn't tell the full story about presidents and the limited power they have over the economy, particularly on federal spending and the deficit.

Because Congress controls federal spending, presidents must work with lawmakers on cutting the federal deficit. That puts much of what can be done about deficits beyond the sole control of any president. A great deal depends on which party controls the House and Senate.

It's difficult, too, to blame the economy's weakness on the sheer magnitude of the debt. The economy is weak largely because it is still staggering from the Great Recession, which officially ran from December 2007 to June 2009.

Many economists put it the other way around, saying the debt is high because of the weak economy. Businesses and families are saving more these days, and the government's spending of borrowed money is one way the economy has been propped up.

The growing debt problem existed before Obama came into office, and the economy itself bears much of the blame. The debt grew under tax cuts enacted by former President George W. Bush and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan paid for by borrowing. The emergency financial bailout begun by Bush a few months before he left office added to the red ink, as did Obama's 2009 stimulus package.

July 09, 2012

The two biggest winners look to be Canada and the United States. Canada, with something like two trillion barrels worth of conventional oil in its tar sands, and the United States with about a trillion barrels of shale oil, are the planet’s new super giant energy powers. Throw in natural gas and coal, and the United States is better supplied with fossil fuels than any other country on earth. Canada and the United States are each richer in oil than Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia combined.

Does Obama do or say anything to suggest that he gets this? We have a President who thinks it would be politically awkward to approve the Keystone pipeline from Canada before the election. Meanwhile, his ardor for solar, wind and electric cars seems undimmed.

Electric cars will take their place alongside flying cars as utterly obvious advances that never quite arrived. Well, until we have cars running on natural gas powered fuel cells, which arguably shouldn't count.

Two-thirds of likely voters say President Obama has kept his 2008 campaign promise to change America — but it’s changed for the worse, according to a sizable majority.

A new poll for The Hill found 56 percent of likely voters believe Obama’s first term has transformed the nation in a negative way, compared to 35 percent who believe the country has changed for the better under his leadership.

The U.S. economy created just 80,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate held steady at 8.2 percent, reflecting continued slow growth in the economy with the presidential election just four months away.

...

May's weak initial 69,000 report was revised upward to 77,000, which made the June number essentially flat.

July 05, 2012

The gist - under the Florida constitution Zimmerman is entitled to reasonable bail, and that right was not lost by his participation in the deception for which his wife has bee charged with perjury.

Judge Leter identified a flight risk based on the second passport and the undisclosed cash:

"Although there is no record of flight to avoid prosecution, the Court finds that circumstances indicate that the defendant was preparing to flee, but such plans were thwarted."

Well - since bail has been set, I doubt that finding will ever be litigated or appealed. There are a lot of specific conditions as to Zimmerman staying in Seminole County and checking in every 48 hours which may be problematic if his life is still endangered by the mobs.

Circuit Judge Kennedy Lester said the higher bond amount was necessary to ensure Zimmerman would show up for trial on second-degree murder charges.

"The increased bail is not a punishment; It is meant to allay this court's concern that the defendant intended to flee the jurisdiction and a lesser amount would not ensure his presence in court," Lester wrote in his eight-page order.

The judge imposed numerous restrictions. He said that if released from jail again, Zimmerman must submit to electronic monitoring, remain in Seminole County, stay away from the Orlando-Sanford International Airport, refrain from applying for a passport or opening or maintaining a bank account, avoid alcohol and obey a curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.

This strikes me as a bit of a BS ruling - was Zimmernan really on rthe verge of becoming an International Man of Mystery? - but it will give the judge better street cred when he finally rules that the state has not overcome Zimmerman's self-defense claim.

Women infected with a parasite spread by cat feces run a higher risk of attempting suicide, suggests a study of more than 45,000 women in Denmark published in a scientific journal this week.

"We can't say with certainty that T. gondii caused the women to try to kill themselves," said Teodor Postolache of the University of Maryland medical school, senior author of the study in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

"But we did find a predictive association between the infection and suicide attempts later in life that warrants additional studies. We plan to continue our research into this possible connection."

The suspected perils of T. gondii featured in The Atlantic magazine in March this year when it ran a widely-read profile of Czech biologist Jaroslav Flegr, who suspects the parasite of literally changing people's minds.

Keith Hennesey explains that much of the repeal of ObamaTax can be achieved through reconciliation, which only requires 51 Senate votes.

Avik Roy of NR works thorugh the electoral mathto see if those 51 votes will be there. It may not be easy. However, the Iowa Electronic Market estimates roughly a 60 chance of a Republican controlled House and Senate.

The Romney spokesflacks won't be helping out health care debate if they persist in raising my blood pressure:

A spokesman for Mitt Romney said the former Massachusetts governor agrees with President Obama that the individual mandate upheld by the Supreme Court last week is a penalty or a fine, rather than a tax.

In a roundabout exchange on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown on Monday, Eric Fehrnstrom was asked if he agrees with Obama that the individual mandate is not a tax.

“That’s correct,” Fehrnstrom said. “But the president also needs to be held accountable for his contradictory statements. He has described it variously as a penalty and as a tax. He needs to reconcile those two very different statements."

Ahhh!

A bit later, we get something like an explanation:

But the ruling and the conflicting statements highlights the trouble Romney has in going after the president on healthcare. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney instituted a healthcare law that includes an individual mandate, and at the time, he too portrayed it as a penalty or a fine, rather than a tax.

“The governor has consistently described the mandate in Massachusetts as a penalty,” Fehrnstrom said, but criticized the president for portraying the mandate in different ways depending on the politics of the situation.

Foir heaven's sake! We have a Federal government of Constitutionally enumerated powers and it is quite clear from the Tenth Amendment that powers not given to the Feds are reserved to the states or to the people. The point being, as governor of Massachusetts Romney was operating under different, and in some ways broader, power than the President of the United States. A state's "police powers" are described at the bottom of p. 7 here.

A state governor can impose a penalty for the failure to buy health insurance; people who don't like that can vote agaisnt the governor or leave the state. A similar penalty at the Federal level could not be justfied (per the new Roberts ruling) under the Commerce Clause.

Romney has a perfectly plausible limited government state's rights case to make here.

AND WHAT ABOUT THAT 'TAX' PENALTY, ANYWAY? Erik Jensen of Case Western is skeptical that just because something like a tax is associated with a law that Congress has the power to tax that activity:

If the penalty for failure to acquire suitable insurance will be a tax, then, it is argued, the requirement to acquire insurance, the mandate, will itself be a valid exercise of the taxing power. If that’s right, it certainly isn’t obviously so. Since almost everything the national government does is funded through taxation, that understanding would lead to a conception of congressional power that is effectively unlimited, and the Taxing Clause would trump almost all other grants of congressional power in Article I, section 8.

That theme is expounded in the paper:

Because almost everything the national government does is supported by taxation, with that understanding the Constitution would provide almost no limitations on congressional power. Moreover, the taxing clause would render almost all the rest of Article I, section 8 of the Constitution surplusage. Why were all those other powers enumerated if they are trumped by the taxing clause? Why should we care, for example, whether Congress is regulating commerce, if it’s using funds raised through taxation to do the regulating? Why did the founders specify the power ‘‘to raise and support Armies’’ if the taxing clause would have sufficed? The taxing clause by itself would make Congress nearly all-powerful.

UPDATE II: In longer interview excerpts released by the Romney campaign, the Republican candidate argues that there's a distinction between a state mandate and a federal mandate when it comes to taxation. The Supreme Court said the federal government can only impose a mandate as a tax, Romney argues, but that doesn't mean a state mandate has to be defined as a tax.

CBS News claims to have two sources backing the notion that Chief Justice Roberts left the conservative wing of the court at the altar on the health care decision:

(CBS News) Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court's four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama's health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations.

Writing at the Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein hadinferred some subtle divisions by the structure of the opinions and dissents.